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From Russia with love

Russia have qualified for the 2011 World Cup and as fate would have it, they will play the USA in a Cold War epic. MICHEL ESTIENNE visited Russia and discovered the world’s biggest country has big plans on the rugby front.

Monday, 03 May 2010

Michel Estienne

Qualified at last! The Russian Bears – as they have been nicknamed – put an end to 20 years of hibernation by qualifying for the next World Cup. They finished runners-up in the European Nations Cup behind Georgia but ahead of Romania and Portugal, and will face a mouthwatering tie against the USA in their first ever Rugby World Cup match. They’ll also play Australia, Ireland and Italy in Pool C.

Castres second row Kiril Kulemin is adamant, though, that Russia are not content merely to become the 25th nation to play in rugby’s showpiece tournament.

“This qualification is all the more delightful as it was obtained through pain. To get across the line in the European Nations Cup was really a hard route to qualify, with closely-fought games. We won our ticket to New Zealand with guts.

“However, the worst is ahead of us. We don’t want to be there just to make up the numbers and lose 100-0. Our goal is to put up strong showing against Australia, Ireland and Italy and beat the USA.

“It’s a great fixture for us to play against the USA. There’s no doubt that this game will catch the eye and imagination of Russian people not even interested in rugby. When I played rugby league, we played the USA in 2002 in the Olympic Stadium in front of a crowd of 25,000. The match was shown live on national television. Moreover, we outclassed them 54-10. So it was absolute madness and the atmosphere was electric. There won’t be any greater fixture in Russia on TV, than the former USSR playing the USA”.

The organisers of that game to be played in New Plymouth on September 15th will be rubbing their hands together in advance. So too are the leaders of the Russian union. Indeed, this game appears to be a true blessing in their efforts to spread the gospel of rugby. The record TV ratings for the final of the 2008 European Nation Cup against Georgia is certain to be broken. More than 25 million people watched the live broadcast of that game.

The buzz around the USA clash could also help the union to at last get some money from broadcasters. Even though the media coverage has grown in recent years, the rugby shown has been totally free. 7TV and RTR-Sport channels never pay for the rights to cover Russia's domestic championship live and the national teams’ matches.

From 2008 until now, Russia has risen from 24th to 17th place in the IRB World rankings. Boosted by the Olympic vote, Russian rugby doesn’t want to stop here. The vice-president of the Union Howard Thomas, who was previously the chief executive at Premier Rugby Limited, the central organisation that runs professional game in England, admits that Russia is seeking to become a force in the world game.

“Qualification for Rugby World Cup 2011 is significant for us. We have got a five-year detailed strategic plan and so far I think we are doing a good job of sticking to it. It is challenging. We want to be a top 12 rugby nation by 2015 and we want to reach the quarter final of Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan. If we succeeded in identifying talent very young, teams like Scotland and Italy could be looking over their shoulders in 10 years’ time.”

Since Vyacheslav Kopiev’s appointment as chairman of the union (RUR) in 2003, Russian rugby has made rapid progress. Now at ease with itself, the RUR revealed its new direction in February 2008, by creating a “council of the wise” made up of key personalities in the economic and political world who were ready to put money into rugby. This little Davos indicates what Russian rugby could be in the near future: a new Eldorado where money will be freely flowing.

An MP, the police chief and the chairman of the post office board sit on this council but so too does Alexei Sokolov, the chairman of the Zenith Bank, which is one of the most important institutions in the country. When his company bought up the Slava Moscow, Sokolov took the initiative and developed an original way to popularise rugby in 2002.

Everywhere a branch of the bank is opened, a rugby school is automatically created. From Saint-Petersburg to Kazan, there are now 15 clubs affiliated to Slava.

This craze has also contaminated the Moscow region. The government spent more than one million dollars to organise the final of the European Sevens Championship from 2006 to 2008, as well as financing the building of a new stadium. In 2007, the local authorities also launched the Mayor Cup, a competition featuring teams from capital cities around the world. Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov has also personally committed himself to build two new 25,000 capacity stadia dedicated only to rugby.

In search of international recognition, Russia never misses an opportunity to draw attention to its rugby. At the end of May they will organise the IRB Junior World Championship - the first IRB 15-a-side tournament ever hosted in the country.

The previous failure to be selected by the IRB as the host of the World Cup Sevens in 2007 did not dampen the Russian fervour. With the full backing of the government, Russia is today a significant contender to host the 2013 event.

Sometimes its exuberant activism even leads it to go faster than the European authorities. After suggesting the idea, it has been busy organising the first sevens champions’ league.

With its new found ambition, Russia does not restrain itself anymore. The creation of the Professional Rugby League (PRL) in 2005 - an initiative that is extremely rare in less well-established rugby nations - is the obvious proof. Russia was following in the footsteps of Japan, who created the Top League in 2003. The PRL is a 12-team tournament divided into a western and an eastern conference in order to reduce the problems created by jet lag and the exorbitant cost of transport. The season starts in May and finishes in October in order to benefit from the best weather conditions.

Based on this success, Russia is now knocking insistently on the
Amlin Challenge Cup’s door. But efforts to gain entry to the second-tier European competition have been unsuccessful so far, much to Yuriy Sigaev’s great displeasure. The general director of the PRL does not understand why the European Rugby Committee keeps turning a deaf ear.

“We make a lot of efforts to make this sport popular. But we are too isolated. We have been applying to participate to the Challenge Cup for four years. We have followed all the instructions given by the ERC. We are finishing a 12,000-seat facility in Monino. The new stadium will have full under soil heating, which will help overcome climatic and date concerns. If necessary, we can also use Krasnodar [in southern Russia, where Russian football teams play winter European games]. However, the answer has been negative so far. Our champion VVA-Podmoskovye is sailing through but does not improve. By dint of remaining between ourselves, we exposed ourselves to death by familiarity.

“Our strategy is to build and to play a cross-border tournament,” Thomas said. “Of course, we would like to put a team in the Challenge Cup. But our season has a different structure. The European Cup is mainly played in winter whereas we play more in summer. The IRB asked us to play in the northern hemisphere window but it would better suit us playing the same season as the southern hemisphere.

“I am not suggesting that we want to change. And because of that difficulty of scheduling and the travelling costs, we are not an easy expansion for the European competition. It’s really a shame because Russian clubs are the strongest in Europe outside France, England and the Celts. We are definitely better than the Romanian and the Spanish that have one team each participating in the Challenge Cup. I think our club system is even more competitive than Italy.

“We are talking now with the ERC about the possibility to participate in a competition boasting Romanian, Georgian and Russian clubs. But at the same time, it will make more sense for us to play with Japanese clubs that are very similar. We want to be pragmatic in this affair. If we can get one opportunity to broaden our horizon, we will jump on it.”

In terms of isolation, Russia has paid its dues. Rugby was brought a century ago to Odessa, on the bank of the Black Sea, in the bags of English navy men. The first Soviet championship took place in 1936, before being interrupted during the Second World War and then forbidden by Stalin who considered it a bourgeois sport.

In 1957, Russia organised the World Festival of Youth and Students, including a rugby competition in which teams from France and Romania took part. Encouraged by this event, Russian students created their own teams. Deprived of any contact with foreign countries, the self-taught players relied on their own resources and used videos and documents brought by foreign students to Moscow or by leaders of friendly unions like Romania to learn that sport.

More than 20 years before union went professional, the players were already paid. During the Soviet era, it was the norm for factories or state institutions such as the army, the police or the railroads to form their own clubs and recruit their own players.

In 1975, USSR played their first international tests. Evgeny Antonov was sent to the southern hemisphere to seek inspiration from the All Blacks. He brought back a method of play that allowed for the off-loads and quick recycling that was used brilliantly during the victory against France A in Merignac in 1982.

This habit of learning from what works outside of Russia has not completely disappeared. Located in the fertile soil of Krasnoyarsk, Yenissei-STM have a partnership with the New South Wales Waratahs and receive DVDs of their Super 14 games. In this way, they can copy the game-plan of the Australian team. Until last season, their historical opponent, Krasny Yar had a French coach.

Last year in the Moscow suburbs, Russia opened a national academy to help overcome their lack of coaches. The facilities at the academy include classrooms, a gym and sleeping quarters and provide a training hub for coaches, referees and the best young talent from the age of seven upwards. The work is beginning to pay off. Russia now has 16,000 registered players spread over 23 regions and 220 clubs.

The most important stronghold of the game is the city of Krasnoyarsk, slap bang in the middle of southern Siberia. Nominally European, politically Russian and geographically Asian, Krasnoyarsk lies less than 200 miles north of Mongolia.

This piece of taiga is accessible after a five-hour flight or three days on the frosty trans-Siberian railway from Moscow. The area is so isolated that it became the perfect place to deport political dissidents from the Kremlin. Lenin was imprisoned there by the Tsar in 1897. Stalin built his infamous enforced labour camp, Krasnoyarsk ITL, which was vividly described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his novel Gulag Archipelago.

That population of convicts similar to Australia explains Krasnoyarsk’s craze for rugby. The industrial city of one million inhabitants is the only Russian town where rugby is the number one sport.

Polar temperatures don’t stop the game. Rugby can be played there until temperatures reach -15°C and a winter championship is even played between December and March. While the average attendance for a PRL game is only 2000 spectators, the boiling-hot derby between Krasnyi Yar and Enisei-STM can attract a crowd of 5,000

In the 2000s, Krasnoyarsk was the former home of the union, which has since relocated to Moscow.

Until 2008, the city hosted the national team’s matches. But Russia was asked by the IRB to play in the European window and had to relocate its games to the bank of the Black Sea, in the Olympic city of Sochi. The problem is that the city hasn’t any rugby culture and the Bears have to play in a football stadium.

This solution should be temporary as VVA-Podmoskovje, National Championship winners for the past four seasons, have been putting the finishing touches to their brand new stadium, which will consist of 12,000 seats and crucial underground heating to combat the weather.

The 23-hectare stadium, which will house indoor and outdoor training facilities, corporate boxes, and commercial enterprises, will form a focal point for rugby in Monino. The garrison town with a population of 20,000 is about 40 kilometres east of Moscow.

At every junction, monuments dedicated to the glory of the air force remind us we are in the Yuri Gagarin Air Forces Academy. It is the country’s largest air base, created by Stalin in 1940 and named after the first man to travel into space in 1961. These barracks, which were for a long time forbidden to foreigners, house the largest collection of military and commercial aircrafts in the former USSR.

The Voienii Vozdouchnaia Academy or VVA is the most prestigious Russian club. Formed in 1967 by students who were doing their military service, they have won 16 national championships and today provide the backbone of the fifteen and sevens national squads.

The team, which is now the undisputed powerhouse in Russian rugby, is headed by Leutenant Colonel Rifkat Sattarov. Most of the professional players are soldiers. VVA, with its €2m-budget, is looked on as the richest club and thanks to its €23 million stadium to be inaugurated next October, they hope to be able to play in the Challenge Cup. Russia is ready to take-off.

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